I really enjoyed this... it's funny and well-written. I have friends with absolutely no sense of direction ... when I say "Just walk north" they look at me blankly. I'm fortunate enough to have a good idea of directions. However, I still like maps because they give you a general sense of what's around, or near, the Hlace you want to go, whereas most GPS systems just tell you the turns and distances.
My husband knows at a glance which direction is which, but I’ve never been able to do it - apart from at sunset, when the pretty sky is in the west, or standing on our local beach looking at the sea, which is south. I’m working on it, though. Well, kind of! 🤣
I should think that a childrens' book would be perfect under the circumstances. I LOVE my childrens' books on ballet, dogs and horses. All laid out in simple no-nonsense language. In a matter of months, Rebecca, I have no doubt that you will be walking from John O'Groats to Lands' End without getting lost once!
Margreet, it’s fabulous! I’m hoping to explore (if you’ll pardon the pun!) what I’m learning from it in a future post. That’s if I can find my way back to my desk, of course….. 😉🤣
Beautiful Rebecca! One of my favorite subjects. I LOVE maps, too. I read them like I read a book. The Ladybird edition is absolutely charming and right at my level. I would love to own the "ancient" 1921 map as well. I even ordered that book you recommended "Ordinance Survey Puzzle Tour of Britain" Lovely! Here is a book I recommend. It will not help you one bit to find your way anywhere, but it is a hell of a good read about navigation https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude
Thanks, Sharron! Maps are wonderful things, but I find myself viewing them more as a pretty picture than as a functional tool. I guess that’s my problem!
The 1921 map is a gorgeous thing - and a right pain to fold (it took me a good ten minutes to do it properly after I’d taken the picture of it opened out)! I’m minded to seek out all of the golf courses mentioned just for a giggle - not that I have any interest at all in playing golf!
Thank you so much for recommending ‘Longitude’. In my mind’s eye I can see it in my parents’ bookcase - I’ll see if I can borrow it next time I’m over there. 😊
PS. As a teacher I knew it was NOT helpful to tell your struggling student, "You'll get it, It is easy! You'll see - anyone can do it. This is basic stuff." Your student immediately thinks, " ...if it is so damned easy, why the hell can't I do it? Must be something wrong with me." A surefire way to discourage them. Psychologically, it is so much better to say, "This is hard, I know! But you will do it, I know you will. Just takes a little time."
I love those words, Sharron! You’re a wise lady. Some teachers can be so discouraging - and children - and adults, too - will always remember which teacher it was who turned them against a subject. I know I do!
I remember those yellow and black books too! I think I had more than a few (purchased in a moment of GCE optimism) but the one I recall best was for Calculus, I think - it was, absolutely useless, unless you happened to already be a physicist. Dry as a BONE and so boring I'd be drifting off thinking of other things as I tried to read. I have a terrible sense of direction myself, very well documented throughout my life and I am not good at reading maps. Also, I have learned that you cannot simply reverse directions to find one's way home as that never works when I'm driving and using landmarks almost exclusively. I do not trust GPS for this very reason.
You seem much better than I am and I also admire your cheerfulness with it :)
(I am feeling much brighter today btw must be from everyone's good thoughts!!)
‘Dry as a bone’ sums up this book exactly, too, Sue! 🙌 LOL!
I never, ever recognise the way home on any new journey I’ve ever been on. It’s an entirely different film reel! Many people I speak to don’t seem to understand my difficulty, and find it easy to identify landmarks and junctions from any angle! I’m not one of them! Sounds like you and I have that in common.
I’m so glad you’re beginning to feel better. Hope D. is, too.
Excellent article. I appreciate paper maps. Using google maps is okay, but it's really important to me to expand the view to get a perspective on some locations. Out here in the Wild West where there are wide open spaces, sometimes expanding the view can disappoint. That little town may have nothing around it, not ever a highway sign or any other familiar landmark. It's just "out there."
Meanwhile, you are wise to choose a "children's book" to learn more about reading maps. I liked the page photos you shared, show how bridges actually look next to the map notation of them. The symbols of the trees (orchards) were really mysterious. And another thing, young lady, that other book sounded like it was written for mariners and others who must navigate their ways across an ocean, so don't feel like you've been shoveled into the "maps for dumies" crowd. I also have seen people get lost using cell phone apps to navigate in the Sierra Nevada and other places with windy mountain roads. My daughter got lost when a Garmin gps led her on a countryside tour of back-of-beyond California instead of keeping her on the freeway. That's baffling enough, but winding around obscure country lanes is a recipe for never being seen again.
Thanks so much! And oh gosh, your poor daughter, Sue! I can feel a post-title coming on - ‘When SatNavs turn against you’. I’m not driving much right now, but I don’t often use the SatNav because it gives me too much input - there is a screen, and a voice, and words, and it’s all too much. I know I can mute the sound, but then I miss junctions.
I never used SatNavs, but then again, I rarely travel beyond 100 miles. When we arrived in Boise last July, we used gazette maps and a city map I downloaded. Then we steered down that crazy freeway and found our hotel. Fits and starts and a little help from the Universe guided us in our wanderings that week. Somehow, we made it back home. WHEW!
‘…that crazy freeway’! LOL, Sue! Awesome work finding your way!
I don’t drive far - only very locally - but one of the things I love to do is to identify things I see as a passenger in the van on our longer journeys. If I see a beautiful castle or a stately home or an amazing view or a lovely river, well, I open up the OS Maps app on my phone (Ordnance Survey = the national mapping service of the UK) and have a go at finding out what that place or landmark is.
I guess I’ve always been driven by detail - which is why, I fear, the bigger picture ALWAYS gets, well, lost……! ☺️
Thank you so very much for mentioning the Phaidon MAPS book to me. My secondhand copy arrived this week (thanks, eBay!). I haven’t opened it yet, because I’m thinking of wrapping it for my birthday! 😘
Also fun to acquaint oneself with the landmarks. Jeff calls it filling in the mental map; although I'm usually the one who remembers the landmarks. He does most of the driving, but he forgets his way often because he's off in his little world and not paying attention to those landmarks.
I think it’s much nicer to navigate as a pair! Well, handy to have another person there, at least. The thing is, I quite like to head off solo on my walks. Maybe I need to engage a drone pilot for a guide? 🤔
‘Filling in the mental map’ - that’s a brilliant way of looking at it. My mental map empties, though, as soon as my back is turned! 😂
I use to never leave home without a map in my car, or a road atlas. If someone tried to tell me directions, they would lose me at the first mention of a corner of a street to turn up or down. My eyes glaze over and I feel like crawling out of my skin! After listening to their dialogue for two seconds longer than a half minute they are starting to tell me how to get someplace, I shove a pen and piece of paper at them and tell ‘em to “draw me a map!” Better yet, I would tell them to give me an address and I will find anyplace with my own maps!
Now, with the advent of technology and my phone’s GPS “Maps” system, I have been using my old maps as book covers for junk journals, or use as ephemera pages for collage art. So much more fun and I don’t even have to leave home.
Oh Gail, I love the idea of using old maps in art - in fact I’ve done a couple of craft projects with some. I must seek them out. I was having a clear-out of a drawer unit in my home office a couple of days ago and actually found a map - well, a large part of one, and some offcuts - I’d forgotten how lovely and robust the paper was. Definitely some art in waiting!
My parents each keep a road atlas in their cars, even though they’ve got GPS. Belt and braces, as it were! I don’t have a road atlas any more - it would be a jolly good idea to get one!
What a delightful evening chuckle you provided as I sit in my eldest sister's comfy living room, listening to Michigan crickets and feeling the warm autumnal air wafting in the open screen door. This sister asked me, "What's so funny?" and I said, "It's my Substack friend Rebecca's post!" and continued to chuckle as I finished reading. Top drawer, RH, top drawer.
Well, they'll be intriguing titles to add to the shelves if nothing more. Particularly the hornet one. Did Mr. Gardener, by chance, attempt to teach you to use a sextant?
Rebecca, I wonder sometimes, when the time comes, if I'll be able to find my way to the Great Beyond, or if I'll be subjected to wandering around in limbo until I finally stumble upon the proper exit. It's reassuring to know I might find folks like you there. 😂
I love the books you discovered at the bookshop, except the Gardiner book. I would not like to ever know that man. Even though I am supposed to be able to read maps, I mainly use them as a general, high level guide to the general direction I need to be going. I always mess up the horizontal distance, and the landmark symbols. I like the picture of the overall scene they provide and the idea that they are helping me get from one place to another, just maybe not on the selected or logical route. 🤣 Thanks again for a wonderful story resulting from your bookshop stop.
I love what you’ve said about the ‘picture of the overall scene’ - that’s really interesting. I think I focus too much on the close detail rather than the bigger picture - blimey, actually that’s the story of my life right there! 🤣
I agree with you - that Gardner bloke’s no friend of mine, either. 👎 Still, at least I found him amusing! 🤣
It's true that Gardiner made us all agree: yup, we've known people like that, No thanks! A good counterpoint to everything else :) It's all good fodder for the story.
I snorted at the phrase, “Although the names Gyro Compass, Echo Sounder, Radar, Consol, Gee, Loran and Decca might well represent useful additions to the decent wayfinder’s toolbox, I can better imagine them on a list of interviewees for a Bond villain seeking to bring new henchmen onto the payroll…” 😂
I really enjoyed this... it's funny and well-written. I have friends with absolutely no sense of direction ... when I say "Just walk north" they look at me blankly. I'm fortunate enough to have a good idea of directions. However, I still like maps because they give you a general sense of what's around, or near, the Hlace you want to go, whereas most GPS systems just tell you the turns and distances.
Thanks very much, John!
My husband knows at a glance which direction is which, but I’ve never been able to do it - apart from at sunset, when the pretty sky is in the west, or standing on our local beach looking at the sea, which is south. I’m working on it, though. Well, kind of! 🤣
I should think that a childrens' book would be perfect under the circumstances. I LOVE my childrens' books on ballet, dogs and horses. All laid out in simple no-nonsense language. In a matter of months, Rebecca, I have no doubt that you will be walking from John O'Groats to Lands' End without getting lost once!
LOL, Prue! I appreciate your faith in my potential! 🤣❤️🗺️
ha ha ha. Great support here, Prue.
🤣
I agree, Prue. Plain language FTW!
Hahaha! I was literally laughing out loud when you were describing your read of Gardener’s book. That would be me too.
🤣 Thanks, Donna!
'Understanding Maps' looks like a real good book, with a great cover!
Margreet, it’s fabulous! I’m hoping to explore (if you’ll pardon the pun!) what I’m learning from it in a future post. That’s if I can find my way back to my desk, of course….. 😉🤣
Beautiful Rebecca! One of my favorite subjects. I LOVE maps, too. I read them like I read a book. The Ladybird edition is absolutely charming and right at my level. I would love to own the "ancient" 1921 map as well. I even ordered that book you recommended "Ordinance Survey Puzzle Tour of Britain" Lovely! Here is a book I recommend. It will not help you one bit to find your way anywhere, but it is a hell of a good read about navigation https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude
Thanks, Sharron! Maps are wonderful things, but I find myself viewing them more as a pretty picture than as a functional tool. I guess that’s my problem!
The 1921 map is a gorgeous thing - and a right pain to fold (it took me a good ten minutes to do it properly after I’d taken the picture of it opened out)! I’m minded to seek out all of the golf courses mentioned just for a giggle - not that I have any interest at all in playing golf!
Thank you so much for recommending ‘Longitude’. In my mind’s eye I can see it in my parents’ bookcase - I’ll see if I can borrow it next time I’m over there. 😊
There is this suggestion: Always begin re-folding a map at the left or right edge. Never from the middle. I believe it works every time?
Wow, thanks for this! See? I’m hopeless, simply hopeless! I’m trying this RIGHT NOW!
PS. As a teacher I knew it was NOT helpful to tell your struggling student, "You'll get it, It is easy! You'll see - anyone can do it. This is basic stuff." Your student immediately thinks, " ...if it is so damned easy, why the hell can't I do it? Must be something wrong with me." A surefire way to discourage them. Psychologically, it is so much better to say, "This is hard, I know! But you will do it, I know you will. Just takes a little time."
I love those words, Sharron! You’re a wise lady. Some teachers can be so discouraging - and children - and adults, too - will always remember which teacher it was who turned them against a subject. I know I do!
Gardner sounds like a bit of a pompous git.
🤣 I think so too, David! 😁 But what a lucky chap, to find everything so easy…… 🙄😂
I'm always lost, too. I know a writer who argues that bad sense of direction is related to high creativity. I doubt that--but it's a theory I do love.
We’re birds of a feather, Mary! I wonder if it’s a left-brain/right-brain thing? Might look into that! ❤️
That’s a really interesting theory. My mom is wildly creative and had never had a clue which direction is which.
Okay, maybe the theory has some merit! 🥰
I remember those yellow and black books too! I think I had more than a few (purchased in a moment of GCE optimism) but the one I recall best was for Calculus, I think - it was, absolutely useless, unless you happened to already be a physicist. Dry as a BONE and so boring I'd be drifting off thinking of other things as I tried to read. I have a terrible sense of direction myself, very well documented throughout my life and I am not good at reading maps. Also, I have learned that you cannot simply reverse directions to find one's way home as that never works when I'm driving and using landmarks almost exclusively. I do not trust GPS for this very reason.
You seem much better than I am and I also admire your cheerfulness with it :)
(I am feeling much brighter today btw must be from everyone's good thoughts!!)
‘Dry as a bone’ sums up this book exactly, too, Sue! 🙌 LOL!
I never, ever recognise the way home on any new journey I’ve ever been on. It’s an entirely different film reel! Many people I speak to don’t seem to understand my difficulty, and find it easy to identify landmarks and junctions from any angle! I’m not one of them! Sounds like you and I have that in common.
I’m so glad you’re beginning to feel better. Hope D. is, too.
I want it to be true that if you study an old map, you can revisit the place at the time the map was created. It would be amazing to see 1921.
Oh Kerry, I LOVE this!!! 😍
Excellent article. I appreciate paper maps. Using google maps is okay, but it's really important to me to expand the view to get a perspective on some locations. Out here in the Wild West where there are wide open spaces, sometimes expanding the view can disappoint. That little town may have nothing around it, not ever a highway sign or any other familiar landmark. It's just "out there."
Meanwhile, you are wise to choose a "children's book" to learn more about reading maps. I liked the page photos you shared, show how bridges actually look next to the map notation of them. The symbols of the trees (orchards) were really mysterious. And another thing, young lady, that other book sounded like it was written for mariners and others who must navigate their ways across an ocean, so don't feel like you've been shoveled into the "maps for dumies" crowd. I also have seen people get lost using cell phone apps to navigate in the Sierra Nevada and other places with windy mountain roads. My daughter got lost when a Garmin gps led her on a countryside tour of back-of-beyond California instead of keeping her on the freeway. That's baffling enough, but winding around obscure country lanes is a recipe for never being seen again.
Thanks so much! And oh gosh, your poor daughter, Sue! I can feel a post-title coming on - ‘When SatNavs turn against you’. I’m not driving much right now, but I don’t often use the SatNav because it gives me too much input - there is a screen, and a voice, and words, and it’s all too much. I know I can mute the sound, but then I miss junctions.
I never used SatNavs, but then again, I rarely travel beyond 100 miles. When we arrived in Boise last July, we used gazette maps and a city map I downloaded. Then we steered down that crazy freeway and found our hotel. Fits and starts and a little help from the Universe guided us in our wanderings that week. Somehow, we made it back home. WHEW!
‘…that crazy freeway’! LOL, Sue! Awesome work finding your way!
I don’t drive far - only very locally - but one of the things I love to do is to identify things I see as a passenger in the van on our longer journeys. If I see a beautiful castle or a stately home or an amazing view or a lovely river, well, I open up the OS Maps app on my phone (Ordnance Survey = the national mapping service of the UK) and have a go at finding out what that place or landmark is.
I guess I’ve always been driven by detail - which is why, I fear, the bigger picture ALWAYS gets, well, lost……! ☺️
Thank you so very much for mentioning the Phaidon MAPS book to me. My secondhand copy arrived this week (thanks, eBay!). I haven’t opened it yet, because I’m thinking of wrapping it for my birthday! 😘
Well, you know how people are when the mysterious birthday gift arrives. Maybe a teen, tiny, itty-bitty, little peek?????
Also fun to acquaint oneself with the landmarks. Jeff calls it filling in the mental map; although I'm usually the one who remembers the landmarks. He does most of the driving, but he forgets his way often because he's off in his little world and not paying attention to those landmarks.
I think it’s much nicer to navigate as a pair! Well, handy to have another person there, at least. The thing is, I quite like to head off solo on my walks. Maybe I need to engage a drone pilot for a guide? 🤔
‘Filling in the mental map’ - that’s a brilliant way of looking at it. My mental map empties, though, as soon as my back is turned! 😂
🤣
I use to never leave home without a map in my car, or a road atlas. If someone tried to tell me directions, they would lose me at the first mention of a corner of a street to turn up or down. My eyes glaze over and I feel like crawling out of my skin! After listening to their dialogue for two seconds longer than a half minute they are starting to tell me how to get someplace, I shove a pen and piece of paper at them and tell ‘em to “draw me a map!” Better yet, I would tell them to give me an address and I will find anyplace with my own maps!
Now, with the advent of technology and my phone’s GPS “Maps” system, I have been using my old maps as book covers for junk journals, or use as ephemera pages for collage art. So much more fun and I don’t even have to leave home.
Another entertaining read! Thank you! 🤗❤️
Oh Gail, I love the idea of using old maps in art - in fact I’ve done a couple of craft projects with some. I must seek them out. I was having a clear-out of a drawer unit in my home office a couple of days ago and actually found a map - well, a large part of one, and some offcuts - I’d forgotten how lovely and robust the paper was. Definitely some art in waiting!
My parents each keep a road atlas in their cars, even though they’ve got GPS. Belt and braces, as it were! I don’t have a road atlas any more - it would be a jolly good idea to get one!
What a delightful evening chuckle you provided as I sit in my eldest sister's comfy living room, listening to Michigan crickets and feeling the warm autumnal air wafting in the open screen door. This sister asked me, "What's so funny?" and I said, "It's my Substack friend Rebecca's post!" and continued to chuckle as I finished reading. Top drawer, RH, top drawer.
Awwww Mary, thank you soooo much! 😊
Well, they'll be intriguing titles to add to the shelves if nothing more. Particularly the hornet one. Did Mr. Gardener, by chance, attempt to teach you to use a sextant?
Rebecca, I wonder sometimes, when the time comes, if I'll be able to find my way to the Great Beyond, or if I'll be subjected to wandering around in limbo until I finally stumble upon the proper exit. It's reassuring to know I might find folks like you there. 😂
I daren’t LOOK at his sextant instructions, Elizabeth - my brain might burst! 💥
And LOL re getting to the Great Beyond! Let’s compare notes on our respective journeys when we get there! 😘
I love the books you discovered at the bookshop, except the Gardiner book. I would not like to ever know that man. Even though I am supposed to be able to read maps, I mainly use them as a general, high level guide to the general direction I need to be going. I always mess up the horizontal distance, and the landmark symbols. I like the picture of the overall scene they provide and the idea that they are helping me get from one place to another, just maybe not on the selected or logical route. 🤣 Thanks again for a wonderful story resulting from your bookshop stop.
I love what you’ve said about the ‘picture of the overall scene’ - that’s really interesting. I think I focus too much on the close detail rather than the bigger picture - blimey, actually that’s the story of my life right there! 🤣
I agree with you - that Gardner bloke’s no friend of mine, either. 👎 Still, at least I found him amusing! 🤣
It's true that Gardiner made us all agree: yup, we've known people like that, No thanks! A good counterpoint to everything else :) It's all good fodder for the story.
I snorted at the phrase, “Although the names Gyro Compass, Echo Sounder, Radar, Consol, Gee, Loran and Decca might well represent useful additions to the decent wayfinder’s toolbox, I can better imagine them on a list of interviewees for a Bond villain seeking to bring new henchmen onto the payroll…” 😂
😁😁😁